Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Dedicated to digitizing and indexing U.S. government documents related to Brazil from the 1960s-1980s, Opening the Archives is an ongoing effort to make primary sources available to the public. Student researchers, under the leadership of Professor James N. Green, have scanned thousands of records from the presidential libraries of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, as well as the State Department, USAID, the Peace Corps, among other institutions and organizations. With the ultimate goal of publishing 100,000 records, the project reflects Brown University’s deep commitment to fostering collaborative relationships in the study of Brazil while strengthening the university’s goal of becoming a leading center for the study of Brazil in the United States.

The manuscript held at the John Hay Library is the primera parte of the complete work and records, as the subtitle indicates, the social and political unrest of the city, as well as its “unparalleled riches and the greatness of its magnanimous people, its civil wars and memorable cases.” Illustrations included in the manuscript portray the metallurgy work of the city, its topographical features, and historic events.

BRASA, founded in 1992, is an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars who support and promote Brazilian studies in all fields, especially in the humanities and social sciences. BRASA is dedicated to the promotion of Brazilian studies around the world in general, and in the United States in particular. This collection contains the records of the organization and include Executive Committee Meeting materials and documentation on the planning and content of the biennial international conferences held by BRASA since 1994.

This project provides access to a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th Centuries held at the John Hay Library.

Professor Skidmore penned ninety sketches detailing his interactions with many influential Brazilians, many of which are reproduced below. His experiences reveal a diverse breadth of characters: presidents, writers, philosophers, hotel maids, and soldiers. Professor Skidmore shares both entertaining anecdotes about live interviews on television and insightful portraits of public figures handling the fluctuations of Brazilian government. This collection of biographical sketches serves as a multidimensional look into Brazil and its people.

Companion website for the course HIST 1970E: “Brazil Under Vargas: Shaping a Nation,” Spring 2015 by Prof. James Green.

A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.

The JCB Library has the largest collection in the world of books printed in Spanish America as a whole prior to ca. 1820, over 7,000 titles, encompassing the output of presses in Mexico, Peru, Central America, Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere.

The John Carter Brown Library holds one of the world's great collections relating to Haiti. Our rare books, maps and newspapers tell the story of the founding of the French colony of Saint Domingue (once the most lucrative colony in the Americas), its demise through the Haitian Revolution (the world's only successful slave revolution) and the founding of Haiti in its place.

Maps of the Americas through 1825

Código Brasiliense, ou Colleção das leis, alvarás, decretos, cartas régias, &c. promulgadas no Brasil desde a feliz chegada do príncipe regente N. S. a estes estados com hum índice chronologico. Rio de Janeiro: Na Impressão Régia, [1811–1822?]. 3 vols.; 30 cm. (fol.). It is a collection of laws and other official documents, printed in a variety of typefaces and on paper of different quality, and bound together in a 3-volume set.

An online bibliography of texts held in the JCB collections that can be browsed by language, genre or region; each record includes a link to the digital version of that text in the Internet Archive

The companion website to the 2010 second edition of Thomas E. Skidmore’s textbook Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, published by Oxford University Press. The content on this site is mainly created and managed by students from Brown University under the mentorship of James N. Green.

The companion website for the eighth edition of Oxford’s Modern Latin America. This website was developed by students at Brown University working with Professor James N. Green in the course “Modern Latin America” and is hosted by Brown University Libraries.

In May 1970, Marcos P. S. Arruda, a young political activist, was seized in São Paulo, imprisoned, and tortured. A Mother’s Cry is the story of Marcos’s incarceration and his family’s efforts to locate him and obtain his release.

A companion website to the book We Cannot Remain Silent where the author, Prof. James N. Green, analyzes the U.S. grassroots activities against torture in Brazil, and the ways those efforts helped to create a new discourse about human-rights violations in Latin America.

The companion website to the 2001 edition of Prof. James N. Green’s book Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil, published by University of Chicago Press.